Some Badass Shit

The FX drama Justified  is a wildly entertaining product though somewhat flawed. The dialogue is great, but great too often. It's what makes Elmore Leonard novels laugh-out-loud thrillers, but on TV you need good, developed characters and even better actors to pull off all the smart mouthing.

Deputy Marshall Rachel Brooks is terrible. That insidious Colton, the junky ex-military henchman is a waste of space - he doesn't even hold a cigarette right. And (dare I say it) I'm tired of Boyd Crowder trying to do Hamlet in every scene.

However, every conversation Raylan has with his boss Art Mullen is priceless.

When Drew Thompson (the Keyser Soze of Kentucky) eludes authorities yet again with the assistance of a small-town whore who has major info on the Crowders, Raylan suggests bringing in the state troopers on the manhunt. Art goes off on a major rant, one for the history books:

"The first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna acknowledge that this guy's awesome...I mean he shoots Theo Tonin, fakes his own death in a spectacular fashion, pushes a guy out of an airplane while he's flying it, parachutes into Harlan County with enough coke and cash to jumpstart the economy of a small country, and then he has the balls to get a job in law enforcement not once but two times...He spends a couple of days riding around with you (Raylan) while you're looking for him. And now he's run off with a hooker that's half his age. That's some badass shit." 

Raylan echoes "That's pretty badass." The "sir" was implied. Art's point is that the Marshall's service need to be the ones to corral one of the greatest fugitives eastern Kentucky has ever known.

And that brings all the old gang out. Wynn Duffy, Elston Limehouse, some Detroit gangsters in a helicopter, and poor "small-time asshole" Johnny Crowder playing triple-agent.

It's an intricate web involving people who are incredibly cagey, yet exceptionally dumb at the same time. It's a winner and a loser all in one. In short, can't-miss television.

A Sunday Away From The Fray: Kentucky

Even with a whole day to myself, I couldn't bring myself to visit the infamous Harlan County. Despite what you gather from the TV show Justified, it isn't right next door to Lexington, it's a good 2+ hours away.

But I did my homework anyway on the central player of my favorite current TV drama. Harlan County is only home to just over 29,000 souls (96% white), and it has at least that many firearms. I met a Harlan native now based in Lexington, and he was actually wearing a cowboy hat just like Raylan's.

ME:   So what is there to do in Harlan on a day off?

HARLAN:   They do ATV tours that are pretty cool.

ME:   What about stockpiling guns and explosives? Is there like a Boyd Crowder fantasy camp?

HARLAN:   There's still moonshine.

ME:   So ATVs, explosives, and moonshine? Or as they call it in Kentucky...Sunday?

HARLAN:   Sounds about right.

ME:   What about Ellie Mae's trailer out in some Holler?

He laughed and said the show makes life look far more interesting than it really is. But some of the stuff is too real. Like last episode, there are plenty of families that'll blow your head off if you try to take away their government "draw."

The "draw" is the government disability/workers comp check for almost every human that has ever worked in the mines. It's ironic that people so dependent on the government are so against it.

Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers has a chapter called "Bloody Harlan" which examines the Culture of Honor that takes place in the American South. The quote that prefaces the chapter is "Die like a man, like your brother did." Generations have killed off each other in Harlan because of an insult directed at one's family.

If I spent the day in Harlan, chances are I would have insulted someone before the day was through. Which would have meant my chances of getting killed would be greater than zero. Especially if I was on the moonshine, setting of explosives while I was ATVing.

So I decided to stay in my Lexington hotel suite and catch up on expense reports. That never killed anyone.

Justified Season 4: The Search For Truth

The season premiere of Justified took a little bit of a turn. It was more like a day in the life of Deputy U.S. Marshal (and unauthorized free-lance bounty hunter) Raylan Givens. Nothing seems more natural than Raylan walking on a Harlan County sidewalk, carrying some keepsakes in a Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale crate.

He collared a fugitive by discharging his weapon to activate a steering wheel airbag, got his car stolen with the aforementioned fugitive in the trunk, and confronted Daddy Arlo in the pen. Boyd blew up a car, a hooker shot a john in a bear costume, and old Arlo shanked a guy in the joint.

It was a very entertaining hour for the second-best show on TV (ahead of Mad Men, but still behind the king). The season premiere didn't offer up too much in the way of a criminal mastermind like Mags Bennett, or a sinister samurai like Robert Quarles, or a brash angle-player like Wynn Duffy. But there were some serious show runners revealed.

First there was the unearthed Panamanian diplomatic bag, linked to a 30-year old botched coke drop, with the mysterious drivers license name Waldo Truth. And then there was the snake-handling religious revivalist, looking to snake away (see what I did there?) Boyd's oxy clientele. Expect everything to converge with some three-way shootout before the end of the season.

As always the dialogue was top-notch, as you would expect from characters drawn from Elmore Leonard. Boyd Crowder's vocabulary goes a little over the top, but the characters are all so well-drawn it is very forgivable. One thing the show was missing was the byplay with Raylan's boss Art Mullen, who didn't appear in this episode.

And Raylan's work "off the books" for cash is bound to have some consequences. A straight-arrow detective doesn't get ratings or sell as many novels as our favorite flawed lawman.

Paper Backtime: Raylan

Finally. It only took 6 weeks. Not that Raylan didn't move, it could've been polished off in 2 days. But getting your book ingestion done isn't about what you read as much as where you read. I haven't been in a school car pick-up lane or in the upright-and-locked position on a plane awaiting takeoff in months.

So while I've been consumed with family activities and feeding this site with dime store opinions, I inched through the latest Elmore Leonard novel - a sturdy companion to the great TV series Justified.

The book is kind of like a TV series in itself, a collection of situations in which our favorite Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens finds himself. There is no over-arching master-criminal like a Mags Bennett or a Robert Quarles on which a given season of the TV series hinges upon.

And the satellite characters aren't really developed, by design. Ava and Winona make brief appearances, and there's backstory, but they don't figure into any of the storylines. Boyd Crowder has a role, but it's more as mining company exec lady's right-hand man, than as Raylan's best "frenemy."

Raylan's conversations with his boss Art Mullen are still priceless.

The characters that are best-drawn are the series of criminals and fugitives that are all clever enough to have some success, but stupid enough to try to get around or through Raylan:

Dickie and Coover Crowe (Bennetts in the TV series), brain-dead sons of Pervis Crowe (the Mags Bennett-type) and bumbling pot dealers.

Layla, the cold-blooded OR nurse that cuts out kidneys in hotel bathtubs and sells them back to the victims as parts.

Delroy, the strip club owner who gets his girls pumped up on oxy to rob banks.

Elmore Leonard is an equal opportunity portrayer of bad guys. Man, woman, rich, poor, white, black, or other - they all fit in Harlan County, Kentucky. And the writer's top-notch dialogue makes them all engaging enough.

Raylan is just as quick-triggered as we know and love, putting down criminals or blasting the hat off some thug muscle just to make a point. And as far as the borderline women go who tempt Raylan, he stays all-business. Strike that, rather primarily business.

There's Jackie Nevada, the 23-year old college poker phenom who skips on the cops after she loses 20 Grand at a raided card game before she winds up on Raylan's radar, makes all her money back and a whole lot more, and gets Raylan to...

THE END